The Montreal Gazette is shocked, SHOCKED that what I’ve long known–that it’s never a riot till the cops show up to get the violence started–might actually be true:
Every time protesters gather at such meetings – notably at Seattle in 1999, Quebec City and Genoa in 2001 and Miami in 2003 – there are rumours of state-paid agents provocateurs whose job is to tar non-violent protesters with a reputation for violence and anarchy.
Thanks to the SQ [Surete de Quebec], these rumours will now take on new life and credibility. The SQ officers were got up like members of Black Bloc, a loosely organized group that first came to North American attention in 1999 in Seattle when they smashed storefronts of stores like Gap, Starbucks and Old Navy during the anti-World Trade Organization demonstrations.
While Black Bloc has done a great deal to undermine more serious and legitimate protests, now the SQ has done the Black Bloc an unexpected and undeserved favour: Because of Montebello, fair-minded people might now be tempted to conclude the people they thought were hooligans could eventually turn out to be police undercover officers.
Oh noooooo, now the sheeple might wake up to the fact that this happens all the time. And that the violence serves a very convenient purpose: to discredit a legitimate, democratic protest movement and provide a pretext for fascistic crackdowns on anyone who doesn’t buy what global capitalism is selling.
What next–sheeple learning to think, and question authority? And also to question any other frequently propagated media myths about the politics of the left?
O, the humanity!
